iptables won't start today

[Rick Stevens]

Chuck Campbell wrote:
> Fedora core 1, kernel version 2.4.22-1.2174.nptlBOOT
> 
> All was working perfectly two days ago, then quit yesterday.  No reboot, nothing
> I can figure out.
> 
> I cannot establish a connection from the outside world to our server.
> I verified that the port forwarding in the router table is correct, and that 
> the protocol (tcp) and port (27500) and internal and external ip addresses
> are correct in the router.  All is fine there.
> 
> I can connect to this port using the host name or localhost from the 
> server machine itself.  I suspect iptables problems.
> 
> I did iptables -L and I get:
> 
> [root at watchdog rc2.d]# iptables -L
> 
> iptables v1.2.9: can't initialize iptables table `filter': iptables who? (do you need to insmod?)
> Perhaps iptables or your kernel needs to be upgraded.
> 
> I did lsmod and got this:
> [root at watchdog fed-updates]# lsmod
> Module                  Size  Used by    Not tainted
> 8139too                14504   1 
> mii                     3608   0  [8139too]
> ext3                   61796   1 
> jbd                    46412   1  [ext3]
> 
> nothing about iptables there...
> 
> I tried to start it manually and got the following:
> 
> [root at watchdog rc2.d]# ./S08iptables start
> Applying iptables firewall rules: iptables-restore v1.2.9: iptables-restore: unable to initializetable 'filter'
> 
> Error occurred at line: 3
> Try `iptables-restore -h' or 'iptables-restore --help' for more information.
>                                                            [FAILED]
> 
> Bizarre, because it was working three days ago.  I rebooted the machine and get
> the same result.
> 
> I looked to see what version I was running:
> 
> [root at watchdog fed-updates]# rpm -qa|grep iptables
> iptables-debuginfo-1.2.9-1.0
> iptables-devel-1.2.9-1.0
> iptables-1.2.9-1.0
> iptables-ipv6-1.2.9-1.0
> 
> I have the following in my updates directory:
> 
> [root at watchdog fed-updates]# ls -lart ip*
> -rw-r--r--  1 root root 118143 Feb  4 13:03 iptables-ipv6-1.2.9-1.0.i386.rpm
> -rw-r--r--  1 root root   4699 Feb  4 13:03 iptables-ipv6-0-1.2.9-1.0.i386.hdr
> -rw-r--r--  1 root root  39810 Feb  4 13:03 iptables-devel-1.2.9-1.0.i386.rpm
> -rw-r--r--  1 root root   3956 Feb  4 13:03 iptables-devel-0-1.2.9-1.0.i386.hdr
> -rw-r--r--  1 root root 885193 Feb  4 13:03 iptables-debuginfo-1.2.9-1.0.i386.rpm
> -rw-r--r--  1 root root   9810 Feb  4 13:03 iptables-debuginfo-0-1.2.9-1.0.i386.hdr
> -rw-r--r--  1 root root 203260 Feb  4 13:03 iptables-1.2.9-1.0.src.rpm
> -rw-r--r--  1 root root 171617 Feb  4 13:03 iptables-1.2.9-1.0.i386.rpm
> -rw-r--r--  1 root root   3554 Feb  4 13:03 iptables-0-1.2.9-1.0.src.hdr
> -rw-r--r--  1 root root   6152 Feb  4 13:03 iptables-0-1.2.9-1.0.i386.hdr
> 
> 
> 
> Help!  I need to get this thing back on line.

Did you try "modprobe ip_tables" to see if the module will load?  There
are several iptables modules involved...the one that everything's
whining about is iptable_filter.o.  I don't have your kernel, but my
iptable_filter.o is 3488 bytes long (.2174nptl, i686), yours may be
be slightly different.

Try "ls /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter/ip*" and
verify that the modules are there.

If either fail, try reinstalling the latest iptables RPMs.  That can
be done by "rpm -Uvh --force iptables-1.2.9-1.0.i386.rpm" and, if you
want, the source, development, ipV6 and debug versions which you seem
to have installed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-  You know the old saying--any technology sufficiently advanced is  -
-               indistinguishable from a Perl script                 -
-                                 --Programming Perl, 2nd Edition    -
----------------------------------------------------------------------